The Australian people are DEMANDING cheaper and reliable power. The government is ignoring the growing dependance on high quality (and cleaner burning) coal that we are exporting. Other countries have seen the light - coal burning power stations are not the filthy polluters they once were. Coal may not be the long term solution, but better a little pollution than sitting in the dark. Renewable energy sources are the ideal, but until science and technology make it cheaper and more reliable, I would be happy with the "coal" alternative.

It seems a bit short sighted to refuse to burn coal ourselves and continue with unreliable power supplies whilst exporting coal by the shipload for other countries to burn.......same pollution goes into the air.

A longer-term concern relates to the environmental impacts of large-scale coal use, especially its climate consequences….

Coal is a carbon-intensive fuel and the environmental consequences of its use can be significant, especially if it is used inefficiently and without effective emissions and waste control technologies. Such environmental consequences include emissions of pollutants such as sulphur and nitrogen oxides, particulates, mercury, and carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Indeed coal-sourced pollution remains the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Hence most forecasts show a very wide range of future coal demand, based on differing degrees of environmental policy implementation.

Now who might have written that? An environmental campaigner? An anti-coal activist in a less bombastic mood? Maybe they’re the words of an advocate for action on climate change?

Actually, these are the views of Ian Cronshaw, a long-standing advisor to the International Energy Agency who was commissioned by the Energy Policy Institute of Australia to write a report about coal and its future economic outlook.

And what did the media say about thar?
The only media report of note came from The Australian newspaper, which ran the headline: “Coal will 'dominate global power sector for decades'” on its front page.

COAL will dominate the power sector globally for decades to come, according to a paper that miners say undermines campaigns by green activists to “demonise” coal.

The paper - written by an International Energy Agency consultant and to be sent to Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane - says coal will remain the dominant power-sector fuel for at least the next quarter of a century despite efforts to diversify power sources and concerns about slower economic growth.

The report in The Australian does not mention Cronshaw’s observations about coal and climate change.

In fact, the words climate change or global warming don’t appear anywhere in the story, even though it takes up almost a third of the three pages of Cronshaw’s analysis. The Australian also chose to quote two coal industry representatives, who took the report’s publication as an opportunity to criticise environmental campaigners.